Nail-biting footage shows just how difficult it is to clamber up the famous final part of Mount Everest in the Himalayas, notorious for its challenging terrain.
To climb Mount Everest, adventurers need extensive training and high levels of fitness – and that’s before you even factor in the balls you’ll have to have to tackle those heights.
This is especially if you reach the Hillary Step, an almost vertical rock face around 12 metres high, which is named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first known person – along with sherpa Tenzing Norgay - to ever scale it in 1953.
Located on the south-east ridge near the summit at about 8,790 metres above sea level, the Hillary Step is generally regarded as the most technically difficulty part of the Everest climb from Nepal, and is the last real challenge for mountaineers before they reach the top.
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It is believed to have been affected by the April 2015 Nepal earthquake, with many saying the cliff has been completely destroyed.
However, as the area is often covered in snow, it is hard to know whether or not it has really changed as drastically as some suggest.
A video posted by Chengdu WestChinaGo Travel Service shows what people are up against when they get to the Hillary Step – and, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s not for the faint-hearted.
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The travel service, which serves as a local tour operator and also provides ‘high-end private customization and educational travel, exhibition, conferences, child adoption and reunion and other themed tours’, did not provide a date for the footage, which was posted in June 2021 and shows a group of climbers ascending the infamous rock face.
Commenting on the clip, one YouTuber wrote: “It’s so amazing to see so many safety lines installed for all to use in this 'now' commercial climbing era. When Hillary and Tenzing summited, they did not know the actual route or have any safety lines already installed, plus it was 1953, that’s mountaineering at its purist.”
Someone else said: “Kudos to sherpas, who fix the ropes every year.”
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A third wrote: “I’m going to go out on a limb and say the safety lines and ladders were not there when Hillary summited!”
The Hillary Step has been dubbed a key part of ‘mountaineering folklore’ by British mountaineer Tim Mosedale, who has summited Everest seven times from a variety of approaches.
He believes it has, indeed, disappeared, having told the BBC in 2017 that it is ‘definitely not there any more’, suggesting it was most likely a victim of the 2015 quake.
However, Pasang Tenzing Sherpa, a high-altitude guide who had just visited the mountain, told the outlet that the step was intact - a stance that Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, agreed with.
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"Nothing has happened to Hillary Step as a result of the earthquake," he told BBC Nepali.
"It's only that only a small portion of the rock is visible, the rest is under snow."
Topics: World News, Travel
Jess Hardiman